


clear mirror, still waters

by courante



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Minor Injuries, Mythology References, POV Alternating, Pre-Slash, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-08 05:12:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19100392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courante/pseuds/courante
Summary: Shane’s walking to his car when he sees a ghost.He’d just come out of the store with some rotisserie chicken when he looks up and sees a little girl in a white dress staring at him from beyond the hood of a car. Children don’t normally stare at him like that; does he still look so tall from this far away? And certainly people aren’t out there showingUnsolvedto kids this age, are they? Which is actually hilarious, now that he thinks about it. Shane blinks at her in slight concern, wondering if she’s lost, and wondering where the nearest police station is, because that’s what good samaritans do, even if he weren't actually planning on it.The girl grins at him, phases through a tree, and disappears around the corner.He frowns.





	clear mirror, still waters

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is based largely on inumaru shibaigoya's song [kiro kitan](https://umehanas.tumblr.com/post/165945354704/%E5%B8%B0%E8%B7%AF%E5%A5%87%E8%AD%9A-the-mysterious-tale-of-returning-home), which in turn was probably based off older stories similar to [crane returns a favor.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuru_no_Ongaeshi)
> 
> (yes this is technically a vocaloid au, no don't @ me about it)
> 
> and obviously none of these depictions of the boys are real or should be real i would be very scared if any of them were

✂️

_There is a boy standing over you._

Your first memory. _No, not your first; your first for this life. There were two of them, maybe more, you can’t remember._

_You remember pain, and you remember blades. Sharp things. You open your mouth and—_

*

_On the sidewalk,_

Shane’s walking to his car when he sees a ghost.

He’d just come out of the store with some rotisserie chicken when he looks up and sees a little girl in a white dress staring at him from beyond the hood of a car. Children don’t normally stare at him like that; does he still look so tall from this far away? And certainly people aren’t out there showing _Unsolved_ to kids this age, are they? Which is actually hilarious, now that he thinks about it. Shane blinks at her in slight concern, wondering if she’s lost, and wondering where the nearest police station is, because that’s what good samaritans do, even if he weren’t actually planning on it.

The girl grins at him, phases through a tree, and disappears around the corner.

He frowns.

🚲

“You want him,” the cat says. He’s playing with a dead thing next to you, something that used to be rat or chipmunk. “Do you think he will taste good?”

“I don’t,” you say, not looking at him. You watch the man walk after the phantom on the street below you, dying rays of sunlight stretching shadows long across the wide LA streets. There’s a weird kind of determination on his face, almost as if not believing what he saw was real. Yes, that’s what it is, the disbelief. He’s fishing out a phone from his pocket as he starts walking faster, skidding past the intersection, nearly colliding with a passing bike, and off the sidewalk onto the little path—

You know what he’s going to do, and you are afraid.

“Liar,” the cat whispers, sharp green eyes turning your way. “I feel sorry for you, you know.”

“It’s not often I see someone like you.”

*

_In front of the church,_

Shane stops in his tracks, eyeing the freshly disturbed patches of grass near the path. He’s passed this decrepit old place a couple of times before, but the path next to it is something new.

He snaps a quick photo of the church for later, then the grass. Shane tentatively takes another step forward to get off the sidewalk, ducking so his hair won’t catch in the branches. Above his head he hears a rustling of wings taking off, and then nothing else.

There’s a park behind the church, somewhat forested for LA standards. _It’s not that dark yet_ , he thinks. There are no others within vision, nobody coming in and out of the buildings, nothing but the crumbling remains on what is otherwise an ordinary street. Somewhat more puzzling is the mystery of why the city hasn’t torn this rotting building down and replaced it with yet another mansion or hipster pop-up shop.

The trees rustle again, and he scans it for any sign of a prank: maybe someone hooked a projector to a drone. Maybe he’s too tired and mistook some kid walking past the car for the thing he makes a job out of not believing in. Maybe the construction site he walked past earlier gave him methane poisoning and he’s actually hallucinating while slowly dying.

Ghosts aren’t real, whatever the thing he just saw was. A ghost can’t disturb the grass— well, he’s not sure what ghosts can or can’t do, but. _They don’t exist._ Shane sighs, runs a hand through his hair, and then starts down the dimly-lit path.

 **[To: Ryan 17:25]**  

> Hey, call me in thirty minutes if I don’t text back.  
>  Saw something weird.  
>  Before you ask it’s not a ghost.

🌳

You watch the man enter, and you follow him through the trees.

You’ve known these forests your whole life, the ones that are still here, and the ones long gone. The forests are better suited for wings and claws, to squeeze through the brambles and flit from branch to branch, to dig at the earth and take to the skies. It is no place for long limbs and flyaway hair, for denim jackets to be snagged by curious thorns or boots tripped by overturned rock.

Here, along the path that fades into nothing at the end, electrical beacons line the forest sparsely. You can hear things above you, moving through leaves and shadows and nothing all at once. There are more of them than you will ever know, but you cannot show fear.

Not here.

You follow him through the trees the way you learned to walk: haphazardly, but never slowing.

*

_Behind the church,_

Shane would rather think himself a more reasonable, cautious person than what most content of him on the Internet would suggest. He doesn’t yell at real people the way he yells at nonexistent spirits, would shy away from arguments (with one exception) if possible, prefers to stick to the walls when he is not called upon to perform.

On any other day he might’ve taken a look at the path leading into the dark forested tunnel and thought, _nah_. But the wet footprints on the broken concrete, small and unremarkable and _unmistakable_ , render that impossible. Here, Shane is forced to consider something else.

_It’s just a kid. Just some real, alive, human kid who’s running around stepping into grass and puddles like kids should. There’s tons of weird kids in this town, man. You’ve seen that the first time you came here as a weird kid yourself. Go home, you doofus._

He looks up at the lights, which, while flickering, have not been shut off. That alone tells him there should still be people around who use this path. Considering the space, perhaps it was once part of a wedding venue. There is nothing to be afraid of in the dark, except vagrants or serial killers or needles coming at him in a surprise attack.

—But wouldn’t it be so _funny_ if, by some extraordinary event, he found something else? He, the skeptic, the one who most certainly would have had a camera out and recording nothing but thin air if he’d thought of it before taking off through the streets, who would perhaps feel a little guilty for his partner not being here, if not for the adrenaline slowly but surely starting to creep through his being. He had seen the footprints, hadn’t he, and the faint sound of laughter he’s hearing now is certainly no hallucination. He hopes, if only to catch some kid in the act.

(Oh, he does.)

Shane steps onto the path and walks, and walks, and walks, never once looking back or hearing the rustling behind him.

🦊

“Hello?” The man calls out at the first sound of giggling echoing through the trees. It is all around him, and you, still shrouded by the leaves. “Any little ghosties out here?”

You bite your lip and sigh and wish he wouldn’t do that. The trees bristle, and you watch several acorns come loose and gyrate to his feet, though he seems to only regard them with vague curiosity before moving on. Perhaps somehow his obnoxious disbelief will keep your friends away, but you know too that as long as you are here they will be relentless in their pursuit. Even when you stay away, they know who you are, and where you came from.

They are difficult things, your fear, and his humanity.

You watch him go, his gait slow but not ungraceful, despite those limbs. You watch him take out his phone, tap something on the screen, then look up at the light next to him, which flickers and dies. You watch him frown, and wish he would smile instead.

And then, you see the fox.

*

_On the path,_

Shane doesn’t see it, at first.

The acorns had been weird, but acorns fall from trees all the time. That’s how nature works. Trees sprout from the ground and grow seeds and drop those seeds to the ground to start the cycle anew. Just like how when people die they eventually become flowers and grass and oxygen. Not as energy left behind, but molecules dissipated into the universe. _Science_.

Faint birdsong drifts into his hearing, calming him; it had maybe been just a little eerie how quiet the forest is, acorns and rustling branches aside. May in any sort of Los Angeles greenery should be accompanied by the sound of screeching bugs and rowdy children, not… whatever this is. Whatever this is becoming. Shane frowns and thinks about texting Ryan again, but there seems to be less signal the further in he walks. He shoves the phone further into his pocket, trying to not think about how he’d really like it to vibrate with any kind of answer soon.

Then he hears a noise behind him and turns, his peripheral vision registering something that doesn’t quite make it to his mind in time for him to be afraid. Something russet-colored, and big, and upright—

He raises his hands instinctively as the thing lunges at him; he is distinctly aware of claws, inches from his face, before a black blur slams the figure towards the ground. Then, Shane sees feathers, and the feeling of fingers curled around his wrist, jerking him frantically down the path.

_“Run!”_

🕯️

He had been hard to carry, but when the man comes to he’s dangling from a particularly hefty branch you’ve found, limbs caught upon smaller ones. Here, you can breathe a sigh of relief for a while, but still you hold out a hand to steady his flailing arms. You don’t want him falling to the ground and cracking his big head open, after all the trouble you’ve gone through.

“What the hell was—” He looks up at you, frowning, some kind of recognition dawning for a split second before receding into wariness even as his tone remains light. “Oh, hah. Did I accidentally walk into— well, I’m sorry, you can let me go now, I won’t say anything. Promise.”

You sigh through your mask, exasperated.

“Nothing against furries,” Shane says hastily, as if potentially offending you—whatever he sees you as—would invite aggression. “I just— why are we in a tree, exactly?”

Perhaps you are a little disappointed, but you shake your head. “I’m not a furry. You almost died.”

His eyes widen. “Hey, wait—”

“Don’t.” You take his hand wavering in front of your face, marveling at how long his limbs are that he’d have knocked your mask off if he’d thought more about it and talked less. He stills, searching your eyes, then flickering to the wings on your back, as if wondering what kind of Hollywood magic’s been cast upon his eyes. “I’m sorry, you’ll just have to trust me, big guy.”

“We have to go. They want you.”

“Who wants me?” And then, as you expected, “Ghosts can’t kill people.”

“...It’s not a ghost.”

“This isn’t funny,” Shane says, the worrisome break in his voice coming sooner than you’d hoped. You see him reach for his phone, but you shake your head and grip his hand firmer. There’s a hint of urgency starting to form in the back of his throat, but no matter how much you want to shriek out an answer, you can only ignore it for now.

*

_In the dark,_

Shane doesn’t know to where the path leads anymore.

There is no light behind him, nor any beyond his feet, save for the glow of the old flashlight the man in front of him holds as he leads Shane down the path. The light seems to illuminate every single dark feather, which ruffles slightly in the wind. A reminder that this is real, or his mind is more active than he’d ever thought it to be. That, or the furry (avian? He’ll worry about it later) community is more into dramatics than he’d thought.

 _They want you._ Something straight out of a bad horror flick, a threat with no rhyme or reason to it. Moreover, all Shane wants to do, were he not caught up in noticing the oppressive closeness of the trees, is to reach out and turn the man around.

_Ryan?_

The name doesn't escape his lips. It’s impossible, though Shane concedes today has been exceptionally strange. Whoever this is is simply a stranger with motives he can’t decipher, with Ryan’s general voice and build; LA’s a big city, and people could meet doppelgangers everywhere. The kinds of comments left on their collective Instagram accounts stand testament to that.

But when he’d touched Shane—  

 _No,_ he thinks as he follows the quickening footsteps and takes out his phone. He’s having a hyper-realistic dream; or, were he to turn around and flee, would other things catch up with him? Shane hits the speed dial and waits, but no music sounds. He cannot hear birdsong anymore, only the eerie silence broken only by the sound of their footsteps, and the faint rustle of wings.

—Even if this is a dream, it might be better to _think_ of the man as Ryan, as preposterous the situation is. Something of substance to keep him going. The essence of what’s materialized in his subconsciousness as _constancy_. Then Shane could ignore the warnings, ignore the superhuman strength that must’ve taken for the man to haul him up that tree, ignore the feathers dancing in his face. About that, something rumbles in the back of his mind that he pushes away.

—Yes, of course that’s what it is. Of course he would, in a nightmare probably borne from reviewing too much _Unsolved_ footage, conjure up some version of Ryan to accompany him. They are a package deal, after all.

“Hey,” he ventures finally, “Where we going, little guy?”

💭

You’re not good at silence, especially now at twilight when the sun is barely visible among the thick foliage and a part of you is starting to yearn for elsewhere. Words bubble to the surface only to dissipate into the dark beyond the reach of your light, until Shane’s words shatter the atmosphere.

“Getting you outta here.”

As much as you know you should keep your own mouth shut, you can’t help it. Crows can be so noisy, and maybe that’s as much as you’ll ever amount to be.

“Oh.” For a moment, he says nothing. “That’s nice. Thanks.”

No resistance. The little bit of hope you’d had earlier reignites inside you; perhaps he gets it now. “Now stop thinking about furries and stick close to me, unless you wanna die.”

You could feel the heat of his body behind you, human and real. Too close, not close enough. Even now it is all jumbled inside you, slowly kindling in your mind the kind of understanding that you cannot look back at this moment. And it is there you are, deep in your thoughts, when his hand suddenly closes in on your shoulder.

“There’s something ahead,” Shane says in a low voice, like he could see anything in the dark with half-broken glasses. Perhaps that absurd height of his has come to some use after all. “Don’t you think maybe, if we go back…”

“We can’t go back,” you hiss in the dark, turning around to glare at him. The beam of light carves deep, cavernous shadows into Shane’s face, and you hate it as much as you want to get his grip off you. “Can’t you see there’s no path there anymore? If we do, then—”

_—Then, fire._

*

_Beyond the tongues of flame,_

Shane sees himself standing there, surrounded by things he can no longer explain.

No; the Other Shane there is smiling, and he’s _pretty_ sure Actual Shane is just making unseemly noises right now while pulling Ryan away from the fire. The flashlight drops to the ground, rolls in place, and vanishes into the burning underbrush, probably already on its way to hell. Like Timmy’s ball, Shane recalls faintly. _Is that what happened?_

“How nice of you to bring the human here,” the Other Shane says, but his mouth does not move. This is a nightmare, Shane reminds himself, even as Ryan braces himself in front of him. An example of _man versus self_. The wacky world of Coraline. Whatever it is he’s seeing, it’s not real. Even if it probably wants to eat him, or something. “Isn’t it—”

But dying in a dream is no fun either. “I think we should run.”

🔥

“No.” You feel his eyes burning holes into your back. “If we run, they’ll just catch up.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Shane yells, turning you around fully now. “What are we supposed to do, get our brains skewered? Hey, I know this is a dream, but that _sucks_.”

Cripes. “It’s _not_ a dream, you idiot!”

“Then _what_?”

Then what? How do you tell him through fire and light dancing in your gaze he cannot see, or refuses to? The frustration on your lips turn to ash as you jerk him away from a falling tree, and you think you might’ve yelled at him to run all the same. You don’t have time to say anything further before some invisible force rips your grasp from his, plunging both of you into darkness.

*

In the Arboretum,

_“Hey,” Shane whispers, carefully picking up the young crow. It’s trembling beneath his thin fingers as it looks up at him with bright black eyes, ruffling its feathers even as Shane could see that it’s hurting. The bird pecks at him halfheartedly, as if knowing nothing it can do will get it out of even an eight-year-old’s grasp. “It’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you.”_

_“What’s wrong?”_

_“I think there’s something wrong with its wing,” Shane explains as he shows the bird to Scott, who nods solemnly. “Remember when Paco fell off his perch at home?”_

_“Yeah, that sucked.” Shane looks up at the trees, each taller than the next; the crow must’ve fallen while trying to fly._

_“Give me those scissors—okay, hold it!”_

_He cuts a strip of gauze and, as Scott holds the crow down, ties it around the makeshift splinter and the wing like he’s seen the vet do it before. It seems like it takes forever between the bird struggling beneath his fingers with its wings splayed out like a hapless chicken, and listening to his mother call out for them in the distance. The bird lets out a second caw once Shane finishes tidying up its injury, this time lying perfectly still in his hand as Scott runs to get a cardboard box from the car._

_“You think this is okay? Maybe we should take it to a vet?”_

_“Caw!”_

_“I don’t think it’d enjoy that very much,” Shane says, looking down and smiling despite himself. The crow pecks at his finger again, though more agreeably this time. “But I guess we should—”_

🌊

You see Shane, and then you don’t; a mirage in the wind, and beyond that, nothing.

“Here! I’m over here—”

You turn and see him on the other side of the water, beyond the Arboretum’s pond. He’s waving to you frantically, mouth open wide in that dumb faux panicky way you’ve already seen one too many times, and you run along the water’s edge towards his voice.

As you run you see his image reflected in the pond’s still, mirror-like surface, and you stop cold.

“What’s wrong?” Shane calls to you, and the man in the water laughs beneath Shane’s face. “Ryan, I’m—”

“Fuck off,” you whisper, hands clenched in fury. “You—you’re not him.”

Shane twists his mouth and holds up his hands; for a moment his whole face seems to shift, and you take a step back. “Hey now, this isn’t a time to be silly.”

“Where is he?” Leaves are sent flying by the furious beating of your wings, settling in a flurry around you, and this time Shane—no, the _Other Shane_ , sighs, defeated. “Answer me!”

“He doesn’t remember who you are,” he says sadly. “You know that, don’t you?”

A part of it throbs still, deep in the veins, buried beneath layers of black. You had never thought you would fly again back then, or at least for a very long time.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Of course Shane doesn’t remember anything from that day— the tall trees, the quiet pond, his hands carefully moving over your head to shield you from the sun. It had been a small thing, a long-forgotten thing, that would’ve slipped quickly from his mind as soon as he boarded the plane back to Chicago. You were nothing but a blip in his otherwise unremarkable trip, and you had never expected to see him again, until you did.

“I don’t care if he doesn’t remember.”

But you know he remembers your laugh, and your screams, the way you tease him. Your number topping his speed-dial list and the arguments you get into over silly things and the movies you watch together sometimes late at night. The work you do and the things that come after. And really, really—

“That’s enough for me,” you say finally, and the mirror shatters.

*

_In his mind,_

“Hey, you’re hurt—”

_(They haven’t fallen down mine shafts on camera before, or cut themselves trying to open rusty doors, yet Shane can’t quite shake off the sense of deja vu.)_

“Don’t worry about me anymore! Listen, don't look back. Follow the acorns on the path, they’ll take you back to where you belong.”

_(There was a forest, and he’d stepped off the trail to gather nuts near the tall trees. Where had that been? What had he found there?)_

“I’m not going without you, Ryan.”

_(In his old desk back home in Schaumburg, between the pages of a yellowed copy of Mother Goose’s Rhymes, lies a single black feather.)_

“Fuck, Shane, just _go_!”

 

 

—Shane opens his eyes and finds himself sitting on the curb beside his car, the sensation of burning on his back still fresh. He tries to sit up, but finding himself disoriented the moment he tries, slumps back down again against the still-warm pavement. His glasses are askew and dusty, though still holding together as he removes them to wipe off on his shirt.

Huh.

Behind him, some kid on a skateboard yells undignified things in his general direction before continuing his merry way down the road. The time on his phone reads seven-forty, followed by a string of texts that’d come in just a few minutes before. Shane scrolls through them, his mind still reeling from the concussion (it _had_ to have been a concussion, right? Had two entire hours really passed without his notice?)

[Missed call 19:35]  
[Missed call 19:37]  
**[From: Ryan 19:37]**  

> Dude what the fuck where are you  
>  Shane???  
>  Look I know you think LA cops are shady but seriously if you don’t call back

[Missed call 19:39]

“What the actual fuck, Shane Madej,” comes Ryan’s voice from the other side of the line as soon as the call connects. “You’re—really gonna give me a heart attack one of these days. Please don’t say you’ve been kidnapped and this conversation is tapped.”

“I’ve most certainly _not_ been kidnapped, thank you very much.” Okay, deep breaths. Ryan sounds completely normal—probably looks completely normal. Nothing like whatever the fuck that dream was. He wouldn’t know, but it’s better to think about it that way. “And I’m pretty sure we’re being tapped all the time, but whatever.”

“Shut up, Shane,” Ryan says fondly. Shane could almost hear the accompanying eye-roll. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“Was there a question?” And then, “Oh. I’m fine, by the way. Sitting next to my car. Might’ve had a concussion or something.”

“...What.”

He considers telling Ryan about the dream; no, it’d just give him ammo for more dumb theories. Shane could already hear it: _I bet an alien beamed some weird-ass memories into your brain and then kidnapped you to experiment on your long noodle arms._

“Say,” he says instead, “Remember the Axeman episode we did?”

“Yeah? What, you met—”

“No, Ryan. The thing you said about falling off a tree and not remembering anything after.” Pause. Shane presses on. “I dunno why it just came to me. Maybe I slipped and hit my head against the car and that’s why I don’t remember anything from the past…few minutes.”

“Must be some dent on your car then,” Ryan jokes. “You…really don’t remember anything? Maybe you should go to the hospital—shit, we’ve got an episode to film on Thursday, you know.”

“Glad that’s more important than me losing all my marbles, Ryan.”

“It’s not like you had any to begin with!” A sigh of relief floods through Shane’s ear, and he feels a little better at the familiar exasperation in Ryan’s voice. “Do you need me to come get you? Not sure it’s a good idea to drive if you might pass out at the wheel.”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks, man.”

It’s not until a few minutes into the ensuing silence after he’d fished the groceries out of his car that Shane realizes Ryan had waited a full two hours to call him, which is...weird. He consoles himself with the fact that Ryan might’ve been busy, or had his phone turned off, or running errands—any number of normal reasons. Shane certainly can’t expect others to be at his beck and call all day, after all.

Ryan hadn’t apologized for the tardiness or Shane's mention of the time, but maybe he’d just gotten so worried he’d forgotten to. It’s kind of a nice thought, actually, even if it makes him feel just so slightly guilty.

He shifts in place and feels something round and hard poking at the bottom of his pants that he hadn’t noticed before. Frowning, Shane reaches into his pocket and—

“...Acorns?”

Across the street, a white cat stares at him from atop a dark blue sedan, its eyes reflecting the yellow of the street-lights above his head. Shane stares back at it until it leaps off its perch at the oncoming lights of Ryan’s car pulling up to the curb.

“Hop on in, big guy.”

The passenger door opens as Shane stands up, and he could see Ryan's pearly whites lined up perfectly in the grin thrown his way. He drops the acorns back into his pocket. It’s probably nothing, Shane tells himself as he climbs in, swallowed by the dark of the interior as if nestled beneath huge, looming wings.

He doesn’t look back as the car pulls away.

**Author's Note:**

>   
> 👻
> 
> the title refers to an idiom in the lyrics「明鏡止水」which comes from a daoist concept denoting 'a calm state of mind, without evil thoughts'
> 
> ryan's [story](https://youtu.be/YrMGIqecu0Y?t=730) about falling on a pile of bricks for those who need a refresher. also if he wasn't trolling shane mentioned on twitter that his parrot was named paco, so.
> 
> the crow...spirit......?? design was inspired by (more pop cultural depictions of) tengu. also i hope it's obvious who the cat/fox/person with shane's face are (or is it really them?????) anyway yeah thanks for reading!!!!


End file.
